LAUGH LINE OF THE WEEK: Janeway: "I certainly won't forget what
happened here." Not until next week anyway...

LAUGH LINE OF THE WEEK RUNNERUP: Torres: "Maybe this was a bad
idea." I agree: the whole television gag in the teaser was a lousy idea. The
embarrassingly bad sitcom schtick ("He's watching TeeVee and not paying attention to
her. Ha! Ha!") makes for a bizarre segue into what turns out to be a deadly serious
episode.

TELEGRAPH OF THE WEEK: It seems that when UPN's promo department
doesn't spoil the episode, the episode's title does. The title "Memorial" (along
with a steady stream of Braga mindf^$# episodes over the years) made it pretty easy to
predict early on in the show exactly what was going on. This, combined with some
incredibly slow pacing in places, had me practically screaming for them to "Get on
with it!"

MINERAL DEPOSIT OF THE WEEK: On the bright side, it was nice to hear
about Voyager searching for the time-honored dilithium, rather than the
revisionist deuterium, a real substance whose real physical properties were contradicted
by just about every Voyager episode that mentioned it. It's a step in the right
direction, sciencewise, for Voyager, though there's still a long way to go
(40,000 light years or so).

MINERAL DEPOSIT OF THE WEEK RUNNERUP: Robert Beltran as Chakotay. Moe
just can't be bothered to put in a good performance even when the material is good. In a
crucial scene in which he, Larry (Kim), Curly (Paris) and Shemp (Neelix), are trying to
piece together their fragmented memories, none of the performances are standout, but
Beltran's is clearly the worst. It's too bad, because this is the scene that either sells
this show or doesn't, and unfortunately I wasn't sold. To be fair, everyone did much
better in the later discussion about what to about the failing transmitter. Speaking of
which...

COURT-MARTIAL OFFENSE OF THE WEEK: Multiple-personality Janeway was in
"off her rocker" mode this week, electing to repair the memorial so that it can
continue educating space-farers for generations to come. By doing so she has become an
accomplice to a scheme that will tamper with the minds of any number of people, warning
buoy or no. I don't think Starfleet would approve; I certainly don't. First, I find the
notion of altering anyone's memory without their consent to be morally repugnant,
regardless of the good intentions that might be behind it. Second, there's scant proof
that the memories being transmitted by the memorial are historically accurate. History and
presumably the memorial's memory programs are written by the victors. Who's to say that
the Nikon really were innocent civilians? Or that the creators of the memorial didn't have
a political axe to grind with those who took over the Nikon colony? Or that good
old-fashioned hyperbole didn't find its way into the memorial? Three hundred years after
the fact, there's little physical evidence, and no one in the solar system to discuss it
with, apparently. The monument itself has a moving inscription, but no documentation. In
short, Janeway and company are proactively and intrusively promoting a history that they
have no way of knowing is true. Suppose the Kazon had broadcast memories of their
mistreatment by the Trabe into the minds of passersby in the Season One and Two Boondocks
of the Delta Quadrant; Janeway would have called it propaganda, and she'd have been right.
So what is it that Janeway is doing here?

BUGGY TECHNOLOGY OF THE WEEK: With respect to the initial discovery of
the memorial, there are any number of contrivances in the way that Voyager's tech
worked (or didn't work). For instance, why is it that the Delta Fryer scanned the planet
on the original mission and didn't detect the monument's power signature? Were The Boys
loafing on their mission or what? Why can Voyager's own scanners detect the power
signature of the monument, but not its synaptic signal that is capable of altering
memories throughout the solar system? Like most of Voyager's other systems
(transporters, warp drive, holodecks), the sensors seem to be using the Writer Fiat 2000
operating system.